Professor Harold Ellis, CBE, Mch, FRCS – 60 years in the NHS
Professor Harold Ellis is Emeritus Professor of Surgery in the University of London and currently a professor in the Department of Anatomy & Human Sciences at the King’s College London School of Medicine. Ellis is an inspirational teacher and one of the most notable British surgeons of the past 50 years. He is now in his ninth decade and has introduced a generation of medical students to anatomy and surgery. He is the author of 25 books, including the student textbook Clinical Anatomy, now is in its 12th edition. From 1950-51 he undertook national service as a Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps, afterwards continuing his training as a surgical registrar in London, Sheffield and Oxford before taking up a post as Senior Lecturer in the University of London. In 1962, he took up the foundation chair of surgery at the Westminster Hospital, a post which he held until his retirement from practice in 1989. After a stint teaching anatomy in the University of Cambridge, he took up his present position in 1993.

Ellis graduated from the University of Oxford in 1948, in the month that the NHS was established. He was appointed CBE in 1987, and the Royal College of Surgeons established The Professor Harold Ellis Medical Student Prize for Surgery in recognition of his teaching and contribution to surgery.

Professor Christopher McGregor
Professor Christopher G A McGregor is Professor and Chair of Cardiothoracic Surgery at University College London and Director of Surgery at the Heart Hospital, University College London Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. He studied medicine at Glasgow University and after completing general surgical training there, became Lecturer in Cardiac Surgery at the University of Edinburgh. Professor McGregor continued his training in Cardiothoracic surgery at Papworth Hospital, Cambridge and was British Heart Foundation/American Heart Association International Scholar at Stanford University, California doing clinical fellowships in cardiac surgery and cardiac and pulmonary transplantation.

Thereafter, he was appointed Consultant Cardiothoracic Surgeon and Senior Lecturer in Cardiac Surgery in Newcastle, where he funded, initiated and directed the third Heart and Lung Transplant Centre in the UK, performing the first successful infant heart transplant in the UK (the patient remains alive 27 years later and recently won medals at the Transplant Olympics in Durban 2013), and the first successful single lung transplant in Europe – this patient lived for a further 16 years. Professor McGregor was subsequently recruited to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota where he initiated the Heart and Lung Transplant Programmes, the Left Ventricular Assist Device Programme and performed the first heart-lung-liver transplant in the US.

He led the formation of the Mayo Clinic Transplant Centre and was its first Director for nine years. Professor McGregor has maintained and continues to maintain externally funded Basic and Translational Research, funded by the NIH in the US and the European Union and NIHR in the UK. Upon return to the Heart Hospital London in 2009, after 21 years at Mayo - where he maintains his academic appointment as Professor of Surgery, - his principal clinical commitments are to general cardiac surgery and surgery for hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy.

He was named as one of Britain’s top doctors by The Times in 2010 and 2011. Professor McGregor is the author of 270 peer review publications, 430 abstracts and he has given 250 presentations at national and international meetings.